I am not saying that we are living the end of art:we are living the end of the idea of modern art.

-Octavio Paz, Children of the Mire:Modern Poetry from Romanticism to the Avant-Garde

If defining the contemporary is no longer the prerogative of the west in our post colonial and increasingly post nationalist present, the different takes on the contemporary become a central issue today. Much as we have come to distrust the binary logic in our postmodern era, placing contemporary Indian art in relation to trends in the west inevitably entails comparativism of sorts. If in the west, apocalyptic imagination about the end of art and art history periodically asserts itself; the Indian cultural scene envisions dreams of renewal and regeneration.